Easily Use Regular Expressions in Your PowerShell Scripts

The .NET Framework’s Regex Support

PowerShell is Microsoft's shell scripting language, based on the .NET framework. The .NET framework provides a solid implementation of regular expressions. You can use it directly in your PowerShell scripts with the -match and -replace operators. Or, you can instantiate System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex class to use all of .NET's regex features.

While .NET's regex support is solid, Microsoft's regex documentation is very poor. Fortunately, RegexBuddy makes it very easy to use the power of regexes in your PowerShell scripts.

If you copied a regex written for another programming language, simply paste it into RegexBuddy, select the original language, and then convert the regex to Powershell.

If you created a new regular expression, test and debug it in RegexBuddy before using it in your PowerShell scripts. Test each regex in RegexBuddy's safe sandbox without risking precious data. Quickly apply the regex to a wide variety of input and sample data, without having to produce that input through your application.

Finally, let RegexBuddy generate a source code snippet that you can copy and paste directly into the PowerShell command line, or your favorite PowerShell editor. Just choose what you want to use the regex for, and a fully functional code snippet is ready. You can change the names of variables and parameters to suit your naming style or the current situation, which RegexBuddy automatically remembers.

Don't bother trying to remember which operators and parameters to use, or how to instantiate .NET classes in PowerShell. And don't worry about properly escaping quotes and backticks. Just tell RegexBuddy what you want to do, and you will get the proper PowerShell code straight away. Anything can be done: testing a string for a match, extracting search matches, validating input, search-and-replace, splitting a string, etc.

"With RegexBuddy I have become a regular expression ninja—there is nothing I can't parse. It has helped me to fall in love with the power of regular expressions and create new expressions in very little time. I have used the output in .NET, PowerShell, JavaScript, and more. This is an *essential* tool for any developer or systems administrator."